- curate. The expression "scrapings of old cloths" agrees exactly
with the mode of making paper from linen rags, but is not in accordance with any facts known to us respecting the use of woollen or cotton cloth. The only objection against this view of the subject is, that, as Peter of Clugny had not when he wrote this passage travelled eastward of France, we can scarcely suppose him to have been sufficiently acquainted with the manners and productions of Egypt to introduce any allusion to their newly invented mode of making paper. But we know that the Abbey of Clugny had more than 300 churches, colleges, and monasteries dependent on it, and that at least two of these were in Palestine and one at Constantinople. The intercourse which must have subsisted in this way between the Abbey of Clugny and the Levant, may account for the Abbot Peter's acquaintance with the fact. It is therefore probable that he alludes to the manufacture of paper in Egypt from the cloth of mummies, which on this supposition had been invented early in the twelfth century[1].
Another fact, which not only coincides with all the evidence now produced, but carries the date of the invention still a little higher, is the description of the manuscript No. 787, containing an Arabic version of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, in Casiri's Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 235. This MS. was probably brought from Egypt, or the East. It has a date corresponding to A. D. 1100, and is of linen paper according to Casiri, who calls it "Chartaceus."
"Codices chartacei," i. e. MSS. on linen paper, as old as the thirteenth century, are mentioned not unfrequently in the Catalogues of the Escurial, the Nani, and other libraries. Joseph Brooks Yates, Esq. F. S. A., of West Dingle near Liverpool, is in possession of a fine MS. of some of the Homilies of Chrysostom, written in all probability not later than the thirteenth century. It is on linen paper, with the water-lines perfectly distinct in both directions. The water-mark is a tower, the size and
- ↑ Gibbon says (vol. v. p. 295, 4to edition), "The inestimable art of transforming linen into paper has been diffused from the manufacture of Samarcand over the Western world." This assertion appears to be entirely destitute of foundation.
